Ambiguity
by Lialioya
Summary: A sadistic mass murderer running free in London, the entire police force scrambling after it, and Mycroft banging on the doors of 221b. All Sherlock Holmes can think about is how his title and fame is slowly being passed on to someone else; someone with more than just the likeness of his intelligence. Slight Johnlock.


Deftly sliding under the police tape and strolling into the crime scene with an almost boastful air of confidence, Sherlock Holmes ignored the harsh glares he received as a result of being so comfortable while slithering into yet another more or less restricted case.

Well, to say he fully ignored them would be disregarding the smirk that settled on his face for a heartbeat before resuming it's monotonous guise.

A few paces behind him followed Sherlock's rather infamous blogging companion, John Watson. Being a tad more mannered than his friend, John was not as boisterous as Sherlock in his entrance. Yet he had enough grit to slip under the tape, and try his best to keep up as the self proclaimed detective set a quick pace towards the entrance of the posh new hotel, that at the moment was covered on the inside with scarlet.

"Lestrade," Sherlock said, yet his eyes never detered from the door which he was quickly approaching. "I want all the details, and don't monologue too much for the sake of sanity."

Despite being close to immune to Sherlock's brash behavior, even he drew back just slightly to frown and knit his brows together. Sherlock, however, didn't even miss a step, walking right past the man and entering the hotel without him.

Lestrade waited for John to reach him before turning to the doctor, pointing his thumb in the direction Sherlock disappeared. "Even I can see he's in a testy mood. Are you sure he'll be alright for the case?"

"It's just been a rough night," John responded, waving off Lestrade's concerns. "He spent all night looking for his spare pocket magnifying glass."

"Spare?" Lestrade mused, but nodded for John to continue. Sherlock barely had time to eat, he must have been sincerely bored to have been looking for a spare object. Yet Sherlock's mind focused better when he was clawing for a case, so Lestrade took such behavior as a good omen.

"And then he realized Mrs. Hudson had dusted the apartment again, and she complained she didn't, and they were just done bickering when you called," John finished, following Sherlock and entering the hotel that didn't so much as creak when he pushed open the door. The place couldn't have been more than a year old and it was already out of business.

Though that had more to do with the freak murder spree that took place there then how often they oiled their doors.

If the former soldier had not - regretfully - seen so much gore before that day he might have turned a very unsightly shade of green and possibly even threw up right there. Whoever had done this was certainly extremely morbid and quite brutal. The hotel owners were at last truly 'one' with their clients as their guts were mangled and splattered across the floors and walls.

Before looking for Sherlock, John checked the corners of the room, and shook his head upon seeing that the cameras had been blasted to pieces as well. The murder had been quite thorough.

John's neck turned quickly towards the sound of a drawer being slammed shut, only to see Sherlock walking away from the reception desk, stuffing hid hands into his pockets.

John knew better than to talk or even breathe when Sherlock was thinking, so he kept his distance, not quite sure where he should be looking. His stomach clenched and unclenched as he swallowed, gaze flicking from wall to wall. He avoided eye contact with any police officers, since he and Sherlock did not make any friends showing up at a crime scene and taking charge.

The former army doctor's sights narrowed in on the elevator which had been seemingly untouched by police and Sherlock alike. Standing still for only a moment, John wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and made his way towards it, excusing himself the entire way.

Upon reaching it, John froze. He saw a tiny note on the button he was about to press. Peeling it off quickly and reading the curly handwriting, he frowned.

_Ding_! Sherlock had snuck up on John without him noticing and the consulting detective was reading the note in John's hand. Watson rolled his eyes. Never in a million years would Sherlock ever muster enough patience to follow the proper etiquette in interacting with human beings.

"Hm." That was all Sherlock offered in regards to the tiny slip of paper in John's hand. Holmes slipped inside the elevator and began to press every button starting from the bottom to the top. John barely managed to step in with him before the doors closed.

John watched as Sherlock pressed the last two buttons then stood up straight. Watson sent him an unimpressed look before turning away.

"What?" Sherlock asked his companion, acknowledging John's sour expression.

"Was that really necessary?" John said, raising his hand to gesture to all the lit up buttons, indicating they were all pressed.

"I need to make sure that all floors were massacred," Sherlock said, not breaking eye contact with John until the doors to the first floor opened with a _ding_! then both their heads turned in unison.

John gagged as the sight of dead bodies and their putrid scent reached him. Sherlock merely nodded then pressed the button to close the doors again.

"Can't you just assume?" John pleaded.

"I have to be sure," Sherlock responded simply as they reached the second floor. _Ding!_

John turned away from the door, unable to see what he knew was behind him by the smell wafting into his nose despite him plugging it.

After what seemed like forever, they at last reached the fifteenth floor. John unplugged his nose but the scent still lingered, causing him to scrunch up his face. Sherlock didn't bother to wait, stepping out of the elevator and down a hall that lead to the en suite.

John shook his head a bit, his steps slowing only slightly as he looked to his left where instead of bricks like to his right, the entire wall was made of a thick type of glass. The sight of London in the morning would have been nicer if it wasn't masked with fog, and if John was there on a happier note.

Speeding up and reaching the slightly ajar door, John pushed it open and hit Sherlock who was on his knees, face pressed to the carpet as he scrutinized something. John tip toed around whatever Sherlock was doing, entering the en suite that was thrice the size of their flat on Baker Street.

John whistled under his breath, impressed by the modern design. Sherlock brushed past him, stopping in the middle of the room and spinning in a circle as if looking for something.

"Lost?" John asked after a moment.

Sherlock didn't reply, but once he finally stopped turning, he drunkly staggered to the right, grasping the closest thing to him that just so happened to be the end table for a plush grey sofa. Sherlock leaned down to look at the table more closely, and once his eyes narrowed over one spot he brandished his pocket microscope and looked at it.

John shook his head, wondering what he ought to be doing other than watch Sherlock straighten once more and bend down, looking at the floor again.

"Is there something about the floor that fascinates you?" John asked Sherlock who ignored him yet again, crawling along the floor from the end table to the door. "Sometimes, Sherlock, I think you're a genius. But it's times like these when I think you really must have lost a screw or three."

"Sh!" The consulting detective silence John who rolled his eyes in response. "Quiet, I thought I heard something."

Sherlock's eyes were wide and alert as he pressed his ear to the floor, concentration written all over his face. John's eyes moved left, then right, not daring to breathe as he strained his ears, listening.

"Was it the wind?" John asked.

Sherlock sighed, and John prepared himself for an assault of words that never came. Instead, Sherlock dived straight into his explanation.

"The carpet has dulled down drag marks," he stated. "That means something extremely heavy was carried across from the table, where he was disoriented (he was most likely hit) to the door and I would need more advanced equipment to see where he went from there, but whoever was in this en suite must have been important enough to carry elsewhere."

Sherlock paused, watching as John pursed his lips and stayed silent like he always did. "There is was again, did you hear it?"

"Probably Lestrade," John shrugged.

Sherlock didn't look convinced, but he continued his rant, physically not able to stop proving he was clever.

"This was a very organized and very planned event," Sherlock thought out loud, his words coming out quicker as his train of thought took pace. "So whoever was in this en suite was important enough to plan this entire building's demise. Someone very powerful whose death would give someone else the upper hand. . . Well, we know something for certain."

Sherlock looked at John to make sure he was still paying attention. John motioned for his flatmate to continue with a wave of his hand.

"Every single floor was massacred, every single client murdered," Sherlock said curtly, and with almost a disturbing lack of emotion in his voice. "Which means-"

"They must have had a network of people on each floor, murdering them all at specific times," a voice said. John and Sherlock turned, watching a young woman in her late twenties step out of the kitchen with her gloved hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, a slightly concerned frown on her face. She walked over to where they were, ignoring the tension in the air at her sudden arrival. "That means they were all somehow connected and worked from the bottom up, to ensure no on escapes."

"With the power outage yesterday no one could have used the phone line or call for help," Sherlock instantly joined in, adding his own opinion, but his face did not shed his wary expression. "But what about the windows? The walls? Someone must have heard."

"If they had this so well planned they could have easily made up some excuse to get them away from the windows, or even better to put something on the locks to make sure they weren't opened," the woman countered.

John didn't have to own Sherlock's brilliant mind to see this woman knew what she was doing. Her dark auburn hair was parted so each half was spilling over either shoulder. She had sharp beady eyes to match the stormy blue buttons that ran down her dark grey coat. It hung around a white blouse and black dress pants.

John finally realized what was off about her stone cold mask of a face and cynical way of speaking; she seemed eerily similar to Sherlock, who was observing her with a mixture of disdain and interest.

Sherlock gave the woman another sweeping glance before striding to the windows. He looked at them for a moment then breathed on them, and he stared intently at the smudge he left by doing so. He turned back to her. "Sound proof glass."

"Sound proof glass, sound proof walls," she said. "Trust me, I've checked."

Sherlock only took a heartbeat to figure it out. "This entire building was built for this murder."

"Yes, yes," the woman waved away this fact as if it was irrelevant. "The true question is that. Can even your great mind put that one together?"

Sherlock looked at the woman with disgust. She was meddling with the nature of how he solved crimes like this one; first solve the crime; the who, what, when, where, how, and then after everything comes the why.

"I heard you rambling on," she confessed. "So, if you believe he is a wealthy businessman, would he not have checked if the security was running correctly before he decided to stay anywhere? Especially if you are proposing it was someone with quite a large fortune and an even larger status in his luggage?"

Sherlock cocked his head, his mouth turning upwards, but his eyes contradicted any kind of smile; they were planning her murder. "Yes, well, perhaps, like you said, they used a diversion between the time he checked the security and the time of the murder."

"Touché," she smirked, and hers was genuine. "One last question; where are the murderers?"

John had taken a step back while the two bickered on about facts and things he could care less about, but his interest was piqued as she asked him this. It was something John had never even thought of.

Sherlock's brow creased. "I'll make sure to check the tapes to see if there was any vehicles seen-"

"Yes, and the amount of people it would take to kill the population of a hotel such as this would fit in a van," she mocked. His nostrils flared.

"What do you propose, then?" He took a challenging step forward, his temper rising every moment he had to look at her, the infuriating woman. . . "They jumped off the roof? They're hidden in the building. . ."

Sherlock's voice dwindled as he considered the possibility. He looked at the woman who stood pompously, smiling sardonically, as if proud he had finally pieced her riddle together.

"They just might be still in the building," Sherlock turned to John while he said this. His face soured noticeably by the time he turned back to the woman. "And how do you know so much about this case? I don't remember you joining the useless bumbling idiots they call a police force."

"I came in an alternate way, and I didn't come for the case, although it caught my attention simply due to the fact that it would catch yours," she said. "Didn't you get my note?"

John's hand subconsciously drifted to his pocket where he had stuffed the piece of paper. The woman nodded at Watson, noticing the action before settling her gaze on Sherlock once more.

"I take it you did," said she. "I heard about some famous detective prancing around London. You see, I came for _you_, Detective."

"I'm no detective," Sherlock responded, his tone dark. He had dealt with fans before, and they ranged from 'write on my chest, Sherlock!' to 'I am going to murder your flatmate, Sherlock!' "The more important question here is: Who are _you_?"

They stared each other down for what seemed like ages before they both spoke in unison;

"The name's Sherlock Holmes."

Both of their faces contorted with confusion, they once again spoke simultaneously;

"That can't be right."


End file.
